A Brain in a Bottle
by potater
Summary: The Winter Soldier is off the streets and under the friendly supervision of Steve Rogers with assistance from Black Widow. As he begins to open up, unsettling questions emerge for both himself and his companions.
1. Chapter 1

**A Brain in a Bottle: ****Part 1 of Who Knows How Many.**

_Black Widow gets Mr. Barnes to talk. There is a troubling discovery._

* * *

><p>Steve watched from the threshold of the living area as she unloaded the contents of her bag onto the kitchen bar table and pulled up a chair.<p>

"You two going to be alright?" he asked, eyes on his friend.

"I'm a certified babysitter, Steve, what would possibly go wrong?" she joked through a tight smile.

When Steve was gone, things went downhill rather quickly-although if the intent was to get some interaction out of the soldier, that was undeniably successful. With his hand around her throat and her back against the wall he snarled, "What did you do to Steve? What did you do to him?"

With a well aimed kick and a swift pulse to his chromed serratus, Widow had him on the floor. She righted her barstool and took a seat. "I would be delighted to discuss Steve. But I don't think I understand your question." She rubbed the ribbing of her throat.

"I don't play games, kid." He stood with a snarl on his face, right hand trying to force sensation back into the left.

"I am entirely serious, Mr. Barnes."

"What are you playing at?"

"Sit on the couch over there Mr. Barnes, and no harm will come to either of us. I would like to answer your questions."

He stared at the couch for a long moment, suspecting some trick, then sat. The plates on his arm recalibrated. "Where's Steve?" he finally asked.

"He's buying carrots. You think I have done something to Steve?"

"You gonna let them get Steve? They can't be far."

"They are dead, Mr. Barnes. You killed them."

His expression fluxed from accusation to incomprehension. "No I didn't."

When bodies of missing SHIELD/HYDRA agents started turning up, it was not apparent whether they were being eliminated as liabilities or if it was an outside job, an arm of the US government, or any number of the anarchist vigilantes that sprung up after the declassification. But as a trail formed over the weeks, a trail that encircled America's second favorite superhero, there were two possibilities. One, Captain America was a had an unsettling nightlife, or two, someone with highly questionable morality was trying to protect him.

"Mr. Barnes, can you trust your memory?"

He folded his arms and propped on foot up on the coffee table defiantly. "'Course."

Widow smiled wickedly. "Okay." She stood and slid a glossy photo off the table and displayed it at a tentative distance for him. "Remember this?"

His face darkened and he lowered his foot to the hardwood floor. "That's not me. Who- do you see this? This man, I had a - plan- And somebody else just-" He snatched the paper out of Widow's grip and held the figure in the light.

"Mr. Barnes, it's you."

"No you don't-"

"Barnes, who else would-"

"I never-"

"Barnes, your fingerprints match those at the crime scene."

He let the accusation slide and took a moment to form a sufficiently emphatic glare. "Miss Romanov, what you don't realize about me is that I remember each hit I made since they did this to me." His fists tightened against the image.

Widow pursed her lips. "Well check your logic mister. You don't remember the ones they made you forget."


	2. Chapter 2

Widow padded to the front door. "Steve's back. I think he'll be glad to see you've opened up."

"He okay?" Barnes asked after a brief silence, still staring at the photograph. _How could they make me forget if they're dead?_ The figure - the Soldier in the photo was doing something to the body. Removing something from the dead man's jacket.

Steve stepped in with a rustle of paper bag and the rhythm of his familiar regime - unlace and set his casual walking shoes in their appropriate spot, hang the coat and hat. He passed through the living area to the kitchen.

"Hey Buc."

"-Hey Steve."

Widow followed Steve into the kitchen, speaking quietly. Barnes gave a sigh and set his head back against the cold window glass, staring at the trimmed white ceiling as if it might condescend to swallow him up. _What's she got to say that I can't hear?_ His arm recalibrated once, then again, and he felt its heat conducted through metal nerves, spreading like an intolerable rash that burned against the fabric of his shirt.

It was a set up. Somebody was setting him up. And who in the world was left to trust?

He lifted his head as Widow made to leave.

"Do I get to keep this?" he asked, waving the print at her.

"That," she hefted a folder from the bar table and flopped it onto his lap. "And more. Just don't drive yourself crazy with it, Barnes."

She gave him a skeptical look and shouldered out the door.

* * *

><p>"Do you want seconds?"<p>

Over dinner he continued to examine the photographs.

"Yeah okay." Steve ladled the stew.

"You think I did this?" he asked, picking the armed figure out of the scene, as if Steve hadn't seen it before.

"Yeah Buc, and of course I'm grateful that you'd-"

"Steve that's not me."

"I don't blame you for - "

"Steve."

Rogers set his fork onto his napkin and stared at Barnes with the rehearsed composure that he hated to use. "Okay, tell me Buc. What is this about?"

Barnes pushed aside his stew with his metal arm and its crude manners. He laid three photographs on the unfinished wooden surface and pointed to the first.

"This is the dumbest framing I've seen in years. I know this. I've framed people." He handled his past with a fickle mixture of revolt and embarrassed pride. "First, these guys, they were my doctors. Scientists. Nobody that'd be going after you. They weren't following you. They were planted." He stabbed a finger at the second photograph.

"So second, I never killed anybody for my own reasons. And when this happened, what, last Sunday? Nobody was leading me around. I was autonomous. I wouldn't do that. These guys did - to me and I had a plan for them but I wasn't going to -ing kill them. That's what they'd expect me to do."

"Third I don't remember a thing of this. So would you stop thinking I did it." He folded his arm.

Steve looked to his stew for support, then spoke quietly.

"Well Buc, we say you did it because we got these images as it was happening, and stopped you as you exited the scene. So that's why we think it was you."

Barnes said nothing.

"But honestly Buc, it's like everything else. It's done. It's somebody else's work."

Barnes's face furrowed in anger. He stabbed a carrot from his bowl and waved it dangerously at Steve. "Yeah it's somebody else's work, and don't go telling me about _him_. This is HYDRA Steve. It's a frame. For what, I don't know. But hell, I'm not letting them get me for anything." He popped the carrot in his mouth.

"They think you died in the crash, Buc. They can't frame you when you're dead."

"Well you got these photos, didn't you? They're probably in the line just like everything else. Everybody knows."

"Online." Steve stared at the images warily. "I don't know."

Barnes glowered. "Yeah you do, Steve. That's why I'm going to figure this out. I'm not letting them get me for anything."


	3. Chapter 3

It was a comm. That's what the armed figure was taking from the body. Barnes sat upright in bed and glanced at the time. No bothering Steve at this hour.

Comms could be contacted and traced. The solider knew how, so Bucky did too.

So who was the dead man? The folder Widow had given him produced a name, bio and contact data. Laurence Engers. Barnes paused. Why had Widow given him this? What had she expected him to do?

He hesitated, then picked up his own comm, the soldier's comm, and touched it to wake, glancing at the window as he did. It was HYDRA technology, yeah, but it was too useful to go in a box somewhere. The electric ink screen flooded matte black, then grey. He scrolled through the display until TRACE appeared. Then he pressed OK and entered the man's phone number.

**UNAUTHORIZED.**

He stared at the glaring message and felt a chill creep down his spine.

"They're dead," he mumbled to the window.

Wary, Barnes returned the comm to the modified shelf under the bottom lip of his nightstand, and from there drew out its his knife. He gripped the handle and rolled onto his feet, skirting away from the dark curtained glass and checking the lock on his door. Solid. Defensible. Satisfied, he flicked the lights off and crawled back into bed with the knife cradled against his chest and eyes fixed on the glass.

* * *

><p>"Hey Buc?"<p>

Barnes sat up slowly, pressing his flesh hand to his shooting back. It was morning and he had somehow ended up on the floor.

"You in there?" Steve was trying the locked doorknob.

"Yeah," he mumbled, standing and checking the area. The knife was somewhere, in his sheets probably. He frowned and opened the door. "What?"

"The news. It's your story, if you want to see it."

"The dead guys?"

In the living area the news channel had the segment on loop.

"It happened right here at the corner of Taffel and Elliot. Last Sunday, four doctors found dead in a closed machinery facility. Among them, Laurence Engers, a researcher at the American Cancer Institute. And the suspect? Well take a look at these surveillance photographs, released by the amended Freedom of Information Act. _None other than the Triskelion's DC Shooter._"

"Bull - " Barnes growled.

Steve fidgeted.

"Police Chief Derain spoke to us on the situation."

"This event appears to be a continuation of a set of serial murders over the past two months. With these photographs now linking the events to the at large DC Shooter, our investigation is making significant headway."

"_Again,_ we bring you the developing story on the DC Shooter-"

"-." Barnes swore, and looked at Steve.

"They'll come asking," he echoed.

Barnes struggled with the clicker a moment, then shut off the display. "But do you see it? Whoever's in those photographs is clear of suspicion. It's aimed right at me, and it's only a couple dots to join. Whatever they're doing, I'm taking their fall."

Steve considered this, then went for the phone. "Natasha will have places. You can't stay here."


	4. Chapter 4

As they drew up to the intersection, Barnes sat stiff in the passenger seat, angled to the window.

"You look at that folder?" Widow asked, as the blinker clicked on-off.

"Laurence Engers," he said to the curbside maildrop. "Laurence Engers was not a cancer researcher. He operated the machine. And the needles."

"People can be many things." Widow eased onto the gas. "Don't you know?"

Barnes said nothing.

Widow turned on the radio.

It curdled him. The percussion of shots, filtered through the tinny speakers, was enough. "Turn it off-" He twisted in his seat, recoiling and pressing himself against the cold glass. The audio track faded out to narration.

"...new development in the Taffel-Elliot murders-"

_"Turn it off!" _he gasped.

"-dead in his home."

Widow silenced the radio. "Okay. Autodrive please."

_"Autodrive initiated."_

Widow slid her hand into the bag at her left, fingers curling around an icer. Barnes was hanging onto his seatbelt with both hands, like a child afraid of being extricated from the car.

"Barnes," she murmured. "You're okay."

The seatbelt slid from his grip. He turned.

_It's okay._

Her hand was half in her bag and he could just see the metal contour of the pistol grip. Outrage flickered in his mind. They had been played.

"You?" he asked as he pulled his own weapon and shot her in the stomach. "How could you lie to Steve?"

* * *

><p>The car eased through two intersections, found the highway and took the first exit. Barnes looked at the unfamiliar gun snug in his grip, looked at Widow, and couldn't find the right questions.<p>

The car pulled into a nondescript parking lot and idled.

"_Destination_," the car smiled.


	5. Chapter 5

"Soldier," Barnes hissed under his breath. "You're alive." He cursed.

He felt like an idiot for leaning on optimism. The Soldier had shut up since their last day in the chair, nearly a month ago. And here he was, active, uncontrolled, filling that space in his head. _And all those men dead._

The Soldier spoke to the accusation in his thoughts with flat Russian.

"Don't blame the chair Barnes. You made me."

Barnes could not remember the first time the Soldier had emerged - perhaps it had begun with the war. Then, with the procedures in his mind, Barnes had lived with an expectation of missing time. He remembered, in the sixties, perhaps, when he returned from a mission and could not recall what he had done. There had been a fumbling, a confusion in his mind. The handlers took over, erased everything. After that, somehow the gaps could resolve themselves. Barnes could remember his own confusion - and then it would be resolved, as if it never happened. Barnes did not trouble himself over it much, until an October day in the 70s, when the Soldier began to speak.

Barnes stared at Natasha and watched as the Soldier pulled out their phone and dialed the emergency number with their conductive flesh hand. "Yes, medical assistance." The Soldier's English was ragged.

After promising to stem the blood, the Soldier opened the car door and left. Barnes struggled against the Soldier for control of their body, hissing through the Soldier's clenched jaw, "What are you doing!"

The Soldier walked silently until they had crossed two streets. He stopped at a corner and began to dial a taxi service. "That girl has been through worse," he growled, and memory flickered through their mind. A cold, arid rock outcropping, a convoy, the comfortable contour of a rifle against his flesh hand - and then, a flicker slipping through; his hands on her throat - "What did you do?" Barnes snarled, fingers trembling in useless anger at his half.

"I protected you. I protected Steve. She would shoot us."

Barnes flared with anger. As if Widow's injuries, death, could do Steve any good. "And all those men, in the photographs? Who were you protecting there?"

"They did terrible things to me. Things you do not know."

"What don't I know?" Barnes snarled.

The soldier smiled sourly.

Barnes resigned himself to watching as the taxi pulled up and the Soldier climbed inside. A short drive and they pulled up to a self-storage lot. Barnes tried to regain control as they disembarked, and to his surprise, the Soldier let him.

"Go on, Barnes. Since you are implicated in my work, I must show you that it is good work, necessary."

Barnes exhaled in disgust, but proceeded with unease. The Soldier knew things.

_And I will share them with you when you are ready._

They stopped in front of a corrugated metal door. The number, 4E-9, felt familiar to Barnes, like a memory of an afterimage. The soldier bent, unlocked and lifted the door open.

Barnes mind fritzed with discomfort at the crudely outfitted room inside. The muscle of his body remembered the space but his mind did not. He sidled with practiced ease around crates of armaments decades forgotten, stopping by the metal-frame bed. Barnes sat on the edge of the exposed metal mesh and stared in horror at arsenal of ballistics.

"Now, I will explain," the Soldier said, pleased.


	6. Chapter 6

So the soldier showed him pain.

* * *

><p>The room was full of men stretching his mind out of his skull and pinning it open with their questions. They took notes.<p>

"Wipe him."

The man in the chair screamed, clawed, and their cold electric needles pulled through his mind, grafting memory onto memory. And all he knew were the crystalline knives of ice in his flesh and the cloying flavor of decay choking his death-swollen throat.

"Again. Wipe him."

"What do you see?" (Again. Wipe him. Notes on green plastic clipboards.)

He saw a blown-out Brooklyn through the blue Austrian sleet, streets swimming in mud. From behind he wall he followed his target in the scope of his rifle-And then something heavy (he thought of rebar) swung him in the back and he flung forward on crumpling splintering legs into the bottomless snow. The words cracked in his throat as he tried to speak to the men stretching his mind out of his skull and pinning it open with questions.

"Vitals are set. Hibernation ready."

"You'll be good this time, Barnes." The man speaking was dead, fifteen years later, in a closed machinery building. His voice curled under Barnes' and the Soldier's skin with its gentle coercion.

"No," the Soldier was moaning, sliding onto his knees before the man, like an insolent seven year old.

"No."

"No! NO!"

"I can't-_I can't breathe in there_-**_No_**!"

"I _CAN'T_-"

He suffocated as they thrust him into his coffin and began flooding it, black spotting across his vision as the room spun and flickered. The coffin tasted like death, and it held him around the throat with its bloated hand.

When he regained consciousness, he was suspended in timeless, bodiless cold. There was no light.

The Soldier buried Barnes' consciousness away, and waited.

And now the Soldier was screaming, but it wasn't from the chair. He was on a paper lined table and bleeding. And angry.

"Mission Report."

The Soldier screamed in fearless spite at his master, and rolled to lunge with his arm. They could not punish him now. But as he reached he felt the gaping fissure where flesh and metal met and the pain stopped him.

"Mission Report, Soldier."

Barnes started to hear his own voice trembling through the Soldier's lips. "Rebecca-" The Soldier gasped and spat unintelligibly. "Oh help me-"

"-_please_-"

"It's useless. Wipe him."

In the chair, he lit up and went numb.

The electricity tore him, sent his mind crawling-

-and dragged the Soldier out.


	7. Chapter 7

Rogers believed, with conviction, that Buc wasn't a liar. That he had been claiming innocence with a clean conscience. And he wished that it was that simple.

The hospital chair by Widow's bed was hard blue plastic and too small. The fluorescent lights flickered intermittently, teasing a curious, frustrated anger out of him.

"Sam was right," Rogers said, staring bleakly at the idiotic piece of artwork on the opposite wall. A bas-relief fish-tank-styled assemblage.

"Don't start, Steve."

Rogers looked blank. "I can't even begin to understand." He searched for more words, then shrugged. "I can't."

"Then get help."

* * *

><p>The Winter Soldier watched through the infrared rifle scope. His shoulders tensed as the target stood, facing away from the window. It was a clear shot to the chest. The Soldier's hand tensed.<p>

_No_, Barnes objected.

The Soldier by design was efficient, responding with logical retribution. But Barnes tasted revenge like acid in his throat. He had his own ways of working.

Barnes set the rifle down against the lip of the building's roof and swung a leg over the retaining fence, softly descending to the fire escape.

It was a short jump to the lower roof, and the door there came open with a satisfyingly brutal wrenching of metal.

There was only one apartment on the fourth floor. Barnes stopped before the door and questioned. The hall was dark. He knocked.

On the other side he heard movement, but there was no motion at the door. He knocked again, and aimed his handgun at the peephole. "Doctor," he said, softly. "Your door is not going to keep me out."

After a moment, the doorknob unbolted and turned. Barnes pushed his way in, forcing the man back, and quickly closed it behind them, crushing the knob in his metal hand.

He flicked on the light switch. Doctor Andrew Jenkins stood in lumberjack-plaid pajama bottoms and a grey heathered t-shirt with a look of dread seeping along the tired lines of his face. It was three am. The man kept a clean apartment. _Like Steve_. There were dishes in the sink though.

"This is why we don't go inside," the Soldier said in rough-edged English.

Barnes gave the Soldier a dismissive glare and turned to Jenkins. "I don't care if you called the police. They are ineffective."

Jenkin's face twitched, and Barnes smiled, relieved by the man's fear.

The Soldier paced the kitchen area, peering down one hall, then the other, where he discovered the living room. "The chair, Jenkins." Barnes directed, taking a seat on the couch across from the doctor.

Barnes savored fear in man's demeanor and waited for him to speak. _Coward._

"_Well_? Mission report."

The Soldier opened his mouth in confusion. Barnes felt his control slipping as his other half struggled in thought. No - that's not how-

"Mission report, _Soldier_."

"The targets have been..." Barnes fought to stand, to find his gun, and the Soldier slid in muddy Russian, holding on to the couch. "You're," Barnes squinted and found his handgun. He aimed. "The last one." But the Soldier's fingers were weak in the trigger.

"Tiger," the Doctor's voice cracked.

Barnes stilled with creeping apprehension at what the word's effect might be - and then the lights flicked on. In the kitchen - Rogers, a seven gun backup and a robot.

"That's enough," Steve said. "_Disengage_."

Barnes watched, horrified, as the Soldier lowered the gun. Steve didn't understand. Steve couldn't know what this man was. Steve was protecting Jenkins. Steve was _using_ the Soldier.


	8. Chapter 8

"Kneel, soldier," Rogers said, the words flat and foreign on his tongue. He flinched as Barnes fell heavily to his knees, head down, shoulders slumped. The gun clattered from his slack grip onto the hardwood floor.

Rogers looked automatically to the doctor, unnerved. _Jenkins didn't say_— Barnes trembled. Rogers stared, revolted and transfixed as his right hand grasped convulsively for the gun, fingers sliding uselessly over the barrel even when he found it. Rogers opened his mouth to speak his friend's name but found his throat dry.

By degrees, Barnes lifted his head, struggling as if gravity was dragging it down. Strands of dark hair clung to Barnes' sweat-slick face. "What are you doing?" he hissed through locked teeth, eyes wide with horrified anticipation. Rogers blanched, and Barnes' face snapped down and away, overcome.

"Stay with us Cap."

"..._extraction_?"

Steve frowned, remembering the others. "Right, Rhodey, let's take, _uh_, Barnes out - I want one of you on backup and the rest of you make sure Jenkins gets out of here in one piece." He lifted the shield from the holster on his back and stepped forward with Rhodey to flank Barnes on either side.

Barnes' hand scrabbled against the hardwood floor.

Steve slid the gun aside with his foot and looked to Rhodey for support; the extraction team sidled up to Jenkins, surrounding him. Someone pried the apartment's door back open.

Barnes raised his head again, pained, but didn't seem to register anyone but Jenkins. "No."

"Get his arm, Rhodes."

"No."

"No! NO!"

"I can't—_PLEASE_—No!"

Barnes thrashed in Rhodey's mechanical grip and Jenkins was guided out.

"PLEASE—"

"Can you do anything Cap?"

As Jenkins escaped, the Soldier forced his way out. With gritted teeth he set his weight onto their metal arm and kicked backwards at War Machine's knees. Rhodey cursed and toppled, releasing the Soldier as he reached to break his fall. Rogers watched with detachment.

"Please," Steve finally tried, as Barnes and the Soldier made for the door. "Wake up."

Barnes stopped in the threshold, turned easily on his heels and grinned as sardonically as he used to. "Oh _Steve_, I have never been more awa-"

A burst of white light blasted Barnes in the chest and he crumpled to his knees, unconscious. War Machine retracted his helmet. "Probably would have been easier to do that in the first place, huh Steve?"

Rogers frowned in distraction. "Yeah." He walked over to Barnes, laying him flat on the floor and searching for weapons. He undid the holsters on Barnes' hip, removing a boxy black comm from one pouch. In the other was a narrow plastic tube with a tablet inside. He stared at it a moment, then slid it into his own pocket before Rhodey could notice. Rogers his his horror behind a carefully composed expression.

"Your honest opinion, Rhodey." Steve looked at Barnes' face. The corner of his mouth was still tweaked just slightly by the bitter grin he'd worn moments earlier. "Do you think it was him?"

Rhodey shrugged. "I've only seen those films, Cap. You'd know better than me."

Rogers said nothing, but he hadn't seen such easy confidence on Barnes' face since the war.


	9. Chapter 9

Barnes stood in the door to the kitchen, angry through the grogginess in his mind. His cybernetic arm was locked with the elbow crooked and fingers curled. The weight of the metal structure tugged his torso down, and the muscles where it attached were numb and slack.

Rogers sat at the kitchen table, back turned so he faced the window. The curtains were pulled, as they had been in Barnes' room when he awoke. Rogers was holding something.

There was a long silence between them, and Barnes' anger at the state of his arm resolved into a sick chewing feeling in his gut that tugged darkly at his memory. He blocked the thoughts and stepped toward Steve in silence. His left arm swung stiffly at his side.

Rogers made a thick sound, and Barnes froze with one hand on the available chair at the table. Steve held a lidded plastic tube in his hand.

I've seen that before, Barnes realized, and turned to the Soldier for explanation. The Soldier was silent.

Rogers cleared his throat. "Is it you?"

"...Yeah it's me."

"Was it you last night?"

Barnes hesitated. "It was my idea."

Rogers' face was steely, controlled. "Then tell me." He stood the vial on the table, and the pill rattled. "Was this for Jenkins, or was it for you?"

Barnes waited for the Soldier, but he explained nothing, and chewing feeling curdled in the back of his throat. Steve's sunken demeanor told his what the pill was for. Clumsy words sought an explanation he didn't have - didn't want to have. "The gun - was for Jenkins - " His breath caught in his throat.

Rogers looked to Barnes, but Barnes broke eye contact and stared at the poison tablet.

Barnes' words tangled in his mouth, and a choking fear rose him. The Soldier. The Soldier was the only explanation, and the soldier could - at any moment - His face contorted as he felt the Soldier seeking control. With squeezed breath he managed, "There's someone you have to meet."

And then he was pushed,

back,

back, watching.

The Soldier straightened beside the chair, his face relaxing into a carefully focused calm. He looked from the vial to Rogers and spoke in uninflected Russian.

"We haven't had the pleasure. I am the Soldier."

He was silent a moment, then, sharply; "I might offer my hand but you seem to have disabled it."

Steve opened his mouth, searching the Soldier's face for some hint of what this meant. The Soldier stared back, expression hardening a little.

"You look for answers."

Rogers' face furrowed in confusion. "Yes," he answered. The Russian syllable weighed strangely on his tongue.

The Soldier looked to the vial. "The cyanide was ours." He looked sharply back to Rogers. "I kept it from your friend." The Soldier's right hand moved, as if to take the vial. "I would not have let him suffer. He would have known only the success of our vengeance, in our moment of death."

Rogers made a small sound, and the Soldier turned on him, eyes dark and critical.

"It upsets you? Then you do not see that it is mercy, Rogers. What is left for us in this century? A life in hiding? In prison? While those that made us suffer escape suffering themselves? Justice is all that is left, and the end of our suffering in death." The Soldier snatched at the vial but Rogers slapped it away. It clattered against the wall and under the table, and for a moment the bewildered expression of Bucky played across Barnes' face.

"Buc."

He blinked at Rogers. "I thought we'd just come back here and...it'd be okay." Bucky's expression sunk in dismay. "I'm sorry Steve. For what I am." He gritted his teeth.

"You see, your friend is a weak man," the Soldier cut in. Bucky recoiled. "Afraid of death. Afraid to suffer." His mouth curled into a bitter smile. "He despises me. He does not know the good I have done him."

Steve saw Barnes on his knees, thrashing, begging, and the captain's distress sank into pity. He spoke quietly, with unintimidated sympathy. "Who was it, last night, on the floor?"

The Soldier met the accusation with dead eyes.

"You're still _their_ soldier, aren't you? Why do you let them do that to you?"

The Soldier opened his mouth, but said nothing. And then Buc emerged, shaken and unfocused. He raised his eyes after a moment, and in disbelieving wonder murmured, "He left."


	10. Epilogue

"Whatever happened to Jenkins?" Buc asked, turning the icer over in his hands as he waited for Nat to pull up. He perched on the back of Steve's sofa, and glanced towards the kitchen, where Steve was preparing grilled cheese. "You didn't have enough men to watch him."

The butter spat against the heated pan. "There was a deal," Steve admitted after a pause. "He keeps quiet, we protect him from you. TV says Captain America's involved with the DC Shooter, no more protection."

"That deal still valid?" Buc grinned crookedly.

"Well, if he talks, I expect you to take him out with your own testimony."

"Right." Buc got to his feet. "One of these days." The media had gone silent on the Soldier's violence in the months following, but there was no doubt that the investigation continued, wordlessly churning through the volumes of declassified reports and encrypted print records, following a paper trail to eventual confrontation.

Outside, the engine of Nat's car rumbled. Buc holstered the icer and stepped toward the door. "See ya, Steve."

* * *

><p>"Where to?" He ducked into the passenger seat.<p>

"Jersey." Nat handed him a paper-wrapped bagel and eased into the road. "Fury's got something of interest to us both. The site seems inactive - but you know. That's not always the case."

"Good." Buc unwrapped his lunch. "Thanks, by the way."

"You know," Nat mused, when Buc had resorted to picking crumbs from his jacket. "I thought you were done, when you got rid of your personal arsenal."

He glanced up in surprise. "What - you're kidding."

"So you're not worried...He's really gone."

"Yeah - yeah he's gone. My turn now. To do some right." He mumbled with distracted concentration to his jacket.

Buc doesn't say a word to anyone. He doesn't say a word to Nat when they're working and his hand nudges the barrel, autonomous. Correcting with the hairs-breadth-exactitude of the person he once knew. He doesn't mind the help.

* * *

><p><em>((Hi guys, thanks for reading! This was mostly unplanned and based on partial lucid dreaming so it was something of an experiment to write. <em>_Buc's condition in the story is based on Dissociative Identity Disorder.))_


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